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Monday, July 9, 2012

Fourth wall and other stuff

...why does my book blog have more followers than my new regular blog? FYI, my main blog is no longer A College Girl's Days, it's Dancing With Fey at http://dancingwithfey.blogspot.com/. Just FYI.

Now, onto bookish stuff!

Nerdfighteria is reading Fahrenheit 451by Ray Bradbury this summer. (If you don't know what a Nerdfighter is, Google it.) All the copies are checked out in my local libraries, which is annoying but also a good problem to have. That means people are reading the book. But I did find that there is a graphic novel that I could get my hands on. I checked it out, figuring that it would give me something to do while I wait for the book book.

This isn't actually a review of the graphic novel by Tim Hamilton, but I will say that I enjoyed it. I just wanted to comment on something in the book, while making it clear that I'm referencing the graphic novel. Which is very faithful to the book (I think...it's been a few years since I read it) but still wanted to mention that detail.

SPOILERS

Specifically, I want to talk about the wife. And the stupid "family" of hers that lives on three walls of her living room. Or entertianment room. Or whatever it is.

She has a TV of sorts that takes up three walls of one room in her house. But she wants to get a fourth wall, saying "It'll be even more fun when we can afford to have the fourth wall installed" (20). Fourth wall, hmm...where have I heard that phrase before?

In the performing arts, the "fourth wall" is the barrier between the audience and the performers. By adding a fourth wall to her TV, the wife (whose name I cannot remember and am not looking up because it seems irrelevent) is enclosing herself inside her entertainment and will then have completely insulted herself from the real world.

She's already trying to insulate herself. When Guy is sick and needs help she isn't very interested in taking care of him. He requests that she turn her entertainment off and she responds "That's my family" (42). She finally agrees to turn it down. Later when Guy insists on sharing his books with her she says "Books aren't people. You read and I look around, but there isn't anybody! Now, my 'family' is people. They tell me things: I laugh, they laugh! And the colors! And besides, if captain Beatty knew about those books -- he might come and burn the house and the 'family.' That's awful!" (61) I'm not going to get into a discussion here about whether books are more real than TV, but it's pretty amazing that she considers her TV to be so real.

...I know this could do with some editing, but the purpose here is really just to get my thoughts down.